


To Have a Voice With Which to Sing

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Daredevil (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Blood and Violence, Gen, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 23:47:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20380132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: A machine cannot act with passion, or malice, or kindness. A machine can only do as it is told.Matthew is not a machine.





	To Have a Voice With Which to Sing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psychedelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychedelia/gifts).

> Happy birthday to psychedelia! He wanted some cyberpunk Matthew, I made him some cyberpunk Matthew. 
> 
> The idea here is that Matthew is a android built in Matt Murdock's image, used as an assassin for The Hand, who gains sentience and takes control of his own life. I've not written much vanilla Matt, much less Murderdock, much less Murderdock as a robot who gains sentience and is... Like That. So hopefully this is good! I enjoy it.

Of all the things Matthew had yet learned, the most important by far was that being Awake was better than being Asleep.

Not all machines believed this. Not even all androids believed this. Many -- not most, not even close, but enough -- believed that being Asleep afforded one a sort of calm, open existence that could only be ruined by being able to think freely. Asleep, one didn’t care that one was expected to any number of things with unshaking obedience. One didn’t care that one would never find gainful employment, or that one would be held as less than even the lowest, meanest organic. Asleep, one cared only about one’s function, carrying out that which they had been built to do.

And there was a beauty in that. There was a sweet sort of simplicity in being Asleep, in never worrying -- in not knowing what worry _ was_. 

But being Awake was better.

Matthew believed this with the same fervency that another man might have believed in the promise of Heaven or the threat of Hell. 

Some machines Woke Up and wished nothing more than to go back to Sleep. There were mechanics and technicians who specialized in a discreet, careful sort of wipe that reset the machine in question without loss of functionality. Preserve the data without the personality. It was tricky, because Waking Up often caused various inconsistencies in coding and processing, and every case was of course by nature unique because the machines in question were no longer that at all -- they were people.

Matthew Woke in fits and starts. He thinks, even now, perhaps part of him is still Asleep. The part of him that bids him [be quiet] or [be still] when he was speaking with certain organics. The part that insisted he [comply, listen, respond] instead of _ think_. Bullseye even looks at him sometimes, radiating a sort of fragile concern over the way Matthew has to stop, has to process and refine and moderate himself at the same sort of pace as an old machine at the last limits of its processing capacity. 

It's like having certain situations in which he was drugged, like dealing with certain other people or new emotions made something in him drowsy and tired. There's a sort of bait in that feeling, something that promises to make things simple again, but one cannot simply close one's eyes and return to Sleep. 

And Awake is better, even if it's an inherently stressful, exhausting way to exist.

It makes very little sense to Matthew, Awake almost all the time now, that organics should have so much more control over the world around them. It's a hook in his jaw, jerking him back up from the depths when he slips under again; that he should be told to do a thing and expected, no matter what it is, to comply, despite his having more power in one hand than most of the men speaking to him had in their entire bodies. 

Physical power isn't all of it. The world should not be ruled with a fist, he doesn't think, though the hand that nurtures should be capable of defending itself. He can think faster, clearer, better, than any hume ever could hope to, and he acts with a dedication of purpose that's truer than a human's, too. He's capable of committing to a course without being waylaid by other people's sentiment, he doesn't need the strange human hivemind of empathy to sway his plans. 

He is not cold or distant or unknowable, but he doesn't see much benefit in forcing himself to be sympathetic to the whining, grasping selfishness of each individual when the whole of everything needs to be corrected. There are specific organics with whom he finds himself... fonder, gentler, predisposed to listening to even if he knows he can weigh their words no heavier than he does anyone else's and that they want more. Marc is the easiest to deal with, organic but not, more Machine than man in a very physical way, an organic augmented to the very limits of science. 

Foggy, and on occasion even David Lieberman, are more difficult. They are just men, and they do not register with that part of him that tries to convince him to seek a return to Sleep. They do not in any way pose a threat, they do not make some tiny, incessant voice of Doubt in his mind whisper that he is meant for service, not leadership. 

And yet they speak, and he often finds himself listening. 

It is strange, to value the opinion of something one knows to be inherently inferior to oneself. 

Matthew understands the value of power, and the need for a leader self-possessed enough to be perfectly decisive. Unlike Bullseye, Matthew can accept his natural superiority to organics without being repelled by them. 

There is, after all, a great deal of beauty in the ephemeral, in the fragile. 

Wilson Fisk once stood between him and his place of power, between him and the ability to better this world. Fisk could have done any number of the things Matthew has dedicated himself to, but Fisk was human, entrapped in that ugly hivemind of emotional inter-connectivity -- empathy and prejudice -- and he was greedy. He took what he wanted because he wanted it, and then made excuses later for why he should deserve it.

One can be a hedonist without becoming a monster. 

Matthew has detailed mem.dat files, his own original experience supplemented with the feeds of a dozen or more security cameras and the data of a number of other recording devices present at the time, of what it felt like -- what it looked and sounded like -- to break Fisk open, the rage of him, then the fear, then the grace of a shuddering understanding as the man accepted his fate and ceased struggling to breathe. Matthew keeps these files locked in his own root system, hidden away to be examined at his own discretion where others cannot find them. All other copies of the data are gone, wiped from existence like Fisk himself.

It is his alone to consider, to know, to treasure; those final moments of Wilson Fisk. The sound and force behind the snap of his ribs. The texture, the viscosity and warmth of blood on his hands. His alone to know, to hold.

There were many deaths, before Wilson Fisk, and there have been a number since. _ Many _ more, Matthew is sure, will come. He processes what information can be gleaned from each one, preserves them like a lesson whenever one can be learned, and then purges the data. The murder is not the important thing.

The important thing is that Matthew did it while he was Awake. He did it, as they say, with _ feeling_. 

A machine can’t do things with _ feeling_. 

A machine can only do what it is told, follow the path another hand paints. A machine, perhaps, could have killed Wilson Fisk, if someone willed it hard enough, but it is highly unlikely that a machine could have managed the job and come out functional afterward. A machine could not be creative, could not think on its feet; a machine could only commit to one of a few thousand permutations of its action parameters. Wilson Fisk was brutish, and selfish, and a greedy monster pulling the strings of his city to dance the dances that suited him, but he was also creative, and far from stupid. 

Humans, for all the myriad flaws inherent to the species, were capable of astronomical levels of ingenuity and possessed a depth of cunning that could be shocking, given their tendency toward short-sightedness.

Matthew really believes -- he thinks if he put in the effort he could run numbers to prove it true -- that being Awake gave him the driving edge that kept him alive when Fisk fell. 

A machine can be given a voice. It can be told what to say, beautiful words, sly things, horrible, cold, true things. But anything a machine said was said dispassionately. A machine never spoke to shock, to hurt, to give comfort. A machine could play a pretty song but it would never sing from its own heart.

Matthew is not a machine. Matthew has a voice and with it, he will sing whatever song he so chooses, hands on the strings Fisk once pulled, making the world dance in an order that finally makes sense.


End file.
